Congrats to Foursquare for hitting 15 million members! You’re accumulating lots of data on where i frequent, here’s how to make that useful for gift giving.
1) My FourSquare friends can automatically purchase gift cards for me at the places i frequent most
// Let my friends see my total checkins and either purchase a gift card directly from that merchant or via one of the new custom gift card services.
2) Let anyone buy me a giftcard to my favorite restaurant/clothingstore/etc without revealing what the location is
// A little trickier but you can offer anyone the ability to buy me a gift at my favorite restaurant/clothingstore/etc (based on check-ins) without actually telling them what it is (so you still protect my data). I admit this one is a little weirder use case but i was thinking about how to keep check-in data private but still offer gift services.
Basically I think #1 is an easy good idea. #2 is possible but too complex.
Maybe the solution is for Foursquare to partner w Visa/Mastercard for a vanity pre-paid giftcard solution?
Any other ideas on how Foursquare check-in data can be used for better gift giving experiences?
Update 12/7: Foursquare Product Manager Noah Weiss responded on G+ and confirmed that Foursquare has indeed been discussing ideas around gifting features.
“It’s a great idea Hunter, and something we’ve talked about a bit internally. I think the biggest issue is around redemption. Ideally we’d want the gifter to give a gift that can only be redeemed at defined location (or set of locations) by the giftee, but then we can’t use existing pre-paid gift gards like those from visa/mc. If we go with the later route, then there’s no easy way to restrict location.”
